Tits in Times Square

Tanya Basu has an article in Time about illegal display of flesh in New York City:

Walking through New York City’s Times Square at night, it’s hard to miss Lucky.
She has blue-streaked blonde hair and wears skimpy black underwear, silver stilettos and, aside from red, white and blue body paint, nothing else. On a recent evening, she waved to passersby, flashed a grin, and asked, over and over: “Do you want a picture?”
“I’m having fun and making good money,” Lucky, who asked to be identified by her performance name, said as she took a break from her work. “You can’t beat that.”
Lucky is one of the desnudas, women who stroll topless in Times Square, attracting hoots and cheers from tourists and posing for photos in exchange for a tip. She’s from the South Bronx and began working as a densuda shortly after she turned eighteen, drawn to the thrill of parading without clothes in one of the busiest intersections in the world.
But her livelihood, along with that of the other Times Square densudas, is now under threat. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo both spoke out this week against the topless entertainers, objecting, not to their exposed breasts, but instead to allegations that they harass tourists to hand over tips.
On Thursday, de Blasio announced a taskforce to investigate the desnudas, saying he would look for “legislative and regulatory solutions.” Cuomo separately told a reporter, “This activity is illegal.”
Lucky is not too worried about a potential crackdown yet; topless women have been legally protected in New York City since 1992, and she said she never pressures any of her customers for tips.
“The mayor actually helped us, if anything,” Lucky said of the wave of publicity that has accompanied de Blasio’s attack on her trade. “I don’t know if he thought it would stop us in Times Square; it’s actually going way better than before the mayor acknowledged us, to be honest.”
When Lucky first started as a desnuda, she worked with a handler, who took up to seventy percent of her earnings. She soon tired of handing over hundreds of dollars at the end of each evening shift and struck out on her own, painting her body herself and keeping all the money she earns. She’s learned the ebb and flow of the business, taking off Mondays or Tuesdays because they’re slowest. “After a weekend, people are pretty much broke,” she said. “Nobody wants to pay a naked girl.”
She fights back against anyone who thinks she doesn’t work hard, and said she budgets carefully to make the money last through the year. “You can have a bad day when you go home only with a hundred dollars. You can have a really good day when you go home with a thousand dollars,” she said. “In the summertime, I save all the money. It’s impossible to spend a thousand dollars a day. In the wintertime, that’s my backup plan right there.”
Although Lucky is a little concerned about the “bad apple” desnudas who are more aggressive ruining the Times Square scene for everyone, she said she’s planning to just keep doing her job. And with that, she stomped out her cigarette and stripped off her oversize I Love NY shirt, ready for another shift. “I love it. I do,” Lucky said, heading back to her busy corner in the center of Manhattan. “I like the expressions on people’s faces when they see me.”

Colleen Wright has an article in The New York Times about the same phenomenon:

Mey Ovalles ignored the snickers of gawking boys and the smartphones snapping photos as she clutched her bra to her chest and her bare skin became an opaque shade of blue with white sparkles. She shielded her nipples until they were cloaked with brush strokes, though her curvy, sun-kissed body— with the exception of a nylon thong— was exposed to hundreds of passers-by in Times Square. She felt naked until she became a canvas of red, white, and blue.
This was part of Ovalles’s daily routine as a desnuda, a Spanish word meaning naked that has been embraced by the women who strut around the Times Square pedestrian plaza topless and covered in body paint to pose for photos in exchange for tips.
Ovalles is one of the newest participants to join the parade of seminude performers contributing to the carnival-like atmosphere amid the sea of tourists. “Oh my God, it’s a lot of people who see me naked,” Ovalles said. “It’s too fun. It’s totally different.”
The earliest sighting of a desnuda seems to date to the summer of 2013, according to posts on social media. But this summer, on any given day, there are at least a dozen young women, primarily Latinas, of all heights and body shapes, strolling through the pedestrian plazas, trying to capitalize on this suggestive performance art.
Ovalles, who is from Venezuela, had been living in Miami and working as a waitress at a Colombian restaurant when a cousin, Charly Santos, asked if she would like to work with his wife, Paola Peña, in Times Square. He explained the job. Ovalles was open to the idea but wondered how much money she could make. After Santos showed her videos of the desnudas on YouTube, she succumbed to the allure of adventure and moved to New York City in April of 2015.
Her daily income varies, she said, but it averages about three hundred dollars, around a hundred more than she was making in Miami. She said she gets anywhere from five to twenty dollars in tips for each photo.
“I don’t do nothing bad because the people like it,” Ovalles said. “It’s like any other job in another place.”
Times Square, of course, is home to a hotbed of performers, an eclectic cast of costumed characters that include superheroes, Disney icons and green Statues of Liberty, all vying for tourists’ money. Their proliferation has provoked turf fights and altercations with visitors and the police, in some cases resulting in arrests. Some of them straddle the line between soliciting tips and aggressive panhandling.
The desnudas have carved a conspicuous niche for themselves, a mix of Las Vegas showmanship and New York City flair. Their success has even eaten into the business of more established and better-known risqué performers.
“All the people who come to Times Square are looking for the Naked Cowboy, not the naked women,” said Patricia Burck, who is married to the Naked Cowboy, whose real name is Robert Burck.
Ms. Burck, 28, and her sister, Elizabeth Cruz, 26, wear bedazzled bikinis and play guitar as the Naked Cowgirls year-round. Burck said tips drop fifty percent in the summer when the seminude women return to Times Square. “We have some respect for a lot of people, especially because there’s kids around,” Burck said. “I’m still shy to be walking in a bikini. I can’t imagine being naked.”
Putting aside questions of modesty and propriety, the seminude women have the law on their side. The baring of female breasts in public was deemed legal in New York City by the state’s highest court two decades ago.
Still, the performers have attracted criticism. The women have been the subject of about four out of every five complaints received by email and on Twitter since June by the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes business in the area. Half are from those who say they are offended by the partial nudity, and the other half are from people who say they do not appreciate being touched by the women or claim they were hassled for money, according to Caitlin Lewis, a spokeswoman for the alliance. Most of those who complain say they work in Times Square.
“Yesterday two of them came up to me and pressed themselves up against me trying to get me to stop and take a picture,” David, whose last name was redacted by the Alliance, wrote in an email. “Not only was this uncomfortable, but their body paint rubbed off on my suit. This creates an atmosphere that I do not want to bring my kids around.”
Police Commissioner William J. Bratton also does not support what the women do, though there is little his officers can do to stop them. “It drives me crazy when, in Times Square, you see the naked people there covered in body paint as an expression of art,” Bratton said in a recent interview with City & State magazine on the subject of questionable street behavior. Yet, he added: “We’ve researched that top to bottom and we cannot find any law that allows us to interfere with that freedom of expression reflected through art form.”
Many other do not object at all to the seminude women: They include men of every age, as well as women who applaud the liberation of the female breast, and who are fans of body art. Others embrace the painted women who unabashedly bare their bodies as another aspect of unpredictable New York City fun.
Randy and Diana Quate were traveling with a group of visitors from Findlay, Ohio, when they came across the women. Quate, 67, smiled as he stood between two performers. Ms. Quate, 59, took a photo, and afterward Quate tipped them eight dollars to divide.
“They’re naked, but it’s still covered,” Ms. Quate said. “I’m not offended.”
Her husband added, “We’re open-minded people.”
Ovalles insisted that her body was a form of artwork. Nearly every day, Ovalles, Santos and Peña leave their one-bedroom apartment in Queens toting a large drawstring bag stuffed with wedge heels, sandals, paint, feathered headdresses, plenty of water and soft wipes for the start of their ten to twelve-hour day.
As they work, Santos sits at a table in the center of the plaza to touch up Peña and Ovalles, as well as keep an eye out for anyone who tries to grope them. Other desnudas’ boyfriends, who double as painters, sit together at the table and borrow one another’s brushes.
Ovalles plans to return to Miami in September, when the weather in New York City becomes too cool for her. She has also considered returning to her career as a flight attendant, a job she left behind in Caracas, Venezuela. For now, she is focused on her work here. “You don’t have much time,” she said. “Just sleep and Times Square.”

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